Word: shalit
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That strategy, though, carries dangers. Already Palestinian militants have retaliated for the Israeli assault--which, for all its ferocity, killed one Palestinian fighter in three days--by kidnapping and murdering an Israeli teenager. The fallout from the Shalit saga is only hardening attitudes on both sides, making the Bush Administration's goal of forging a Middle East peace deal and a Palestinian state more remote. To Israelis, the soldier's abduction and the Palestinians' initial failure to secure his release have highlighted the fecklessness of both Hamas and Abbas, until now the one Palestinian leader acceptable to Israel. Among...
Somewhere in that inhospitable landscape, Corporal Gilad Shalit, 19, a soldier in the Israeli army, awaited his fate last week. Abducted by Palestinian militants at an army post in Israel and smuggled into Gaza on June 25, he might not have known that his captivity had set off a furious Israeli campaign to try to save him--and in the process, propelled both sides to the brink of full-scale warfare. While surveillance drones buzzed overhead, some 7,000 troops, 80 Israeli tanks and 180 armored personnel carriers massed at the border with Gaza, territory Israel evacuated less than...
...sound barrier, producing thunderous sonic booms on the ground. Most shocking was Israel's destruction of all six transformers at Gaza's central power plant, cutting off electricity to 45% of the territory's inhabitants. Israeli officials insisted they took such measures to aid in the hunt for Shalit, but few Palestinians believed it. In their eyes, the Israeli assault on Gaza's basic infrastructure had less to do with finding the missing soldier than inflicting collective punishment. "We have learned from past experience that Israel uses the opportunity to implement scenarios and schemes it has," says Rafiq Husseini, chief...
...right. The Israeli offensive sent a message not just to the militants holding Shalit but also to the Palestinian leadership, which Israel accuses of abetting rising violence against Israeli soldiers and citizens. A senior Israeli security official says some members of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's government believe the crisis is an opportunity to smash the authority of Hamas, the militant organization that won control of the Palestinian Authority in elections earlier this year. That aim became evident when Israeli forces arrested eight Palestinian Cabinet ministers and 40 Hamas parliamentarians in the West Bank, who may be charged with membership...
Even before Shalit's kidnapping, it would have been a stretch to call the atmosphere placid. For months Gaza militants have fired homemade rockets at Israeli towns, usually missing but causing some injuries and great misery, and drawing Israeli artillery barrages in response. Tensions escalated early last month after seven members of a Palestinian family died in a Gaza beach explosion, which Palestinians blamed on an errant Israeli artillery shell. (Israel denied responsibility.) That prompted Hamas leaders to renounce a 16-month-old cease-fire with Israel, giving an array of Palestinian guerrilla groups the green light to stage...